We Grew
by oh help
Summary: Dean/Seamus ficlets written with the OTP Boot Camp prompts. :: 4. Battered: "There's standing up for what's right, and then there's being stupid. The way you talk to them sometimes, for no reason... It's reckless. It's like you want this to happen to you."
1. Acrid

1. Acrid

Seamus was not one of the somber ones, not immediately. He was one of those who celebrated rather than mourned. Ended up at the Hufflepuff table with half the D.A. and led a raucous victory song. It might have seemed in rather poor taste to you, with the bodies of the dead just a room away, but you were too glad for an excuse to smile to think of anything else. He leaned over and kissed you, messily and laughing all the way through, and didn't care who saw.

"So, Dean," he asked, grinning broadly, "what do you plan to do, now that you're free to exist?"

Just being there, with him, with everyone, was enough for you.

By the time the mid-afternoon sun hung over the ceiling of the Great Hall, you were asleep on your feet. You asked him how long it had been since he slept, and he couldn't remember. Neither could you. And then you pulled him upstairs, stumbling in fatigue and stubbing your toes on chunks of staircase as you went.

The Fat Lady smiled at you gratefully before the portrait hole swung open, ever so pleased that you were alright.

The exhaustion had replaced the high of triumph in him, and he was solemn then. You knew better than to say a word. He didn't talk about things like these, bad things. Instead you held him. He smelled like sour sweat and something on fire.

"Come," you murmured, leading him away.

You slipped his torn robes over his shoulders and let them fall to the bathroom floor, and began to unbutton his shirt. "Dean," he mumbled, "I'm not sure I really have the energy."

"Not that," you said. "You're filthy. It's awful."

He let out a lazy laugh. "I s'pose I am."

You held your hand under the shower until the water was warm and then helped him in. He didn't say anything when you joined him. Just let you rinse the ashes from his hair, the dried blood from his face and body. You ran your fingers in numb horror over his dark bruises and half-healed cuts.

"Look at you," you said, speaking aloud entirely by accident.

"Doesn't matter, really," he replied. "I'm alive."

You leaned your face against the top of his head, the water flowing down into your eyes. "You are."

And you stood there and let the shower wash the war from you.


	2. Agitated

2. Agitated

Seamus's heel is moving rapidly up and down, never low enough to touch the compartment floor, his whole leg shaking, really.

This isn't unusual in itself. He's a fidgety bloke, Seamus is, and he taps his feet like this without realizing it a lot of the time. It's his face that troubles Dean: a particular serious look that, combined with the movement, gives a distinct impression of nervousness. He's barely said a thing for ten minutes. Just watched the countryside streak by on the other side of the window.

It's been four years. Dean likes to think he _knows _when something's up.

"Everything okay?" he tries, not expecting much of an answer. "Bad summer?"

Seamus shrugs. "Dunno."

"You don't look alright, mate."

For a moment, Seamus seems to fill up, with words or emotion or something of the sort, and then he bursts out, "It's Harry."

"What about Harry?" Dean asks in confusion.

"Haven't you been reading the-" Seamus shakes his head and looks back at him, eyes almost pleading. "D'you believe him? About You-Know-Who?"

It is Dean's turn to shrug. "I guess so, yeah."

"Really?" Seamus's eyebrows come together. "But... There's so much that doesn't add up, Dean... Not to mention how it's all just completely mad. How could You-Know-Who possibly come back? And why would he..." The last part is spoken in a horrified whisper: "_Cedric_?"

"I don't know," Dean replies. "But I trust Harry. He's my mate. Don't reckon he'd just lie about something like this." He thinks a little. "Much less Dumbledore."

"Everyone knows Dumbledore's going senile."

"Do you think so?"

Seamus squares his shoulders. "Doesn't matter. I'm still not convinced Harry's not a nutter."

"I guess we'll see," says Dean quietly.

There is a full, suffocating moment of silence between them.

"So, what?" Seamus asks. "Are we gonna fight?"

"What?" Dean looks honestly perplexed. "Why would we fight?"

The rush of affection that runs through Seamus is so strong that he is momentarily dizzied. "I... Never mind. Was your summer alright?"


	3. Breathless

3. Breathless

Dean remembers when he didn't fly. When hovering four feet above the ground was quite enough for him, thank you.

Seamus would take him out sometimes, when all his bottled-up growing-boy energy needed someplace to go. He was a showoff then. He'd swoop and dive and zoom about, and he would laugh at him. "You're not tellin' me you're scared of heights?"

"No more than's reasonable," Dean would mumble.

...

Seamus kept insisting. "We've got to train you up before you come round this summer," he said, as he dragged him out to the Quidditch pitch one evening with a pair of the school Cleansweeps in hand. "There's never anyone to toss a Quaffle with, except Fergus when he's around, and he doesn't play fair. I'm not about to pass up the opportunity."

They kicked off from the ground and rose, Seamus fast and laughing, Dean more slowly. He watched the grass fall away below him. The height was dizzying; he forgot momentarily to breathe.

"It won't help if you look _down_, Dean," said Seamus in amusement. "Even Muggles know that." But he couldn't stop it. He couldn't set aside the intense awareness of how far he had to fall.

...

They laid awake in their tent at the World Cup, pulling apart the match, discussing the intricacies of Quidditch strategy.

Seamus hesitated briefly, as he sometimes did before giving a perhaps-strange compliment. "I reckon you'd be a good player, if you flew. You get things. Gryffindor'd be better for it."

"We've got Harry," Dean said with a grin, "we don't need strategy."

"Well, still, wouldn't hurt."

"Liking Quidditch doesn't mean I'd be any good at it, though," he said. "I'm sure most of the people here are shite fliers."

"I guess so," said Seamus.

"Maybe I should start a club," said Dean thoughtfully into the darkness. "For sports on the ground."

Seamus scoffed. "Who would ever want to join that?"

"I don't know." Dean tucked his arms behind his head. "Muggle schools have tons of teams for different things. With Hogwarts it's Quidditch or you're out."

"We've just brought you to _this_," said Seamus, incredulous, "and you're still on about Muggle stuff?"

Dean shrugged. "I like what I like."

...

Dean remembers telling Ginny Weasley in embarrassment that he would love to go flying with her, honestly, but he wasn't very good with a broom. He remembers that being his petty sixteen-year-old reason to finally learn.

"You won't play so much as a game of catch with me for years," grumbled Seamus, "but the second a girl asks you to—"

"Shut up," Dean interrupted, bouncing on the balls of his feet with impatience (or maybe nervousness). "Just show me how to fly this stupid thing."

...

"It's not that you're a bad flier, I think," was Seamus's diagnosis. "It's nerves."

"I could've told you that."

"Well, I'm sorry, mate. I can teach you to play Quidditch, and how not to crash into things or fall out of the sky, but I can't make you less of a—"

"Coward?"

"It's definitely not as bad as it is in your head," said Seamus. "Maybe if you, you know, stopped complaining and gave it a real shot?"

Dean looked away and grumbled, "I'm not _complaining_..."

"Whatever."

...

"Just chase it. Don't think about anything else."

"I get it, Seamus." He was breathing quickly in anticipation, moving very slightly up and down as he hovered. "Tell me when."

Seamus pulled his arm back and they locked eyes. He took his time, testing the weight of the Quaffle in his hand, and then he threw it with as much strength as he could muster and Dean leaned forward and followed.

That time he was going faster than ever, too fast to focus on the ground if he had looked. But that time he didn't. There was the ball and its arc over the pitch and after a few moments he didn't even have to determinedly ignore his height and his speed and all the other hazards because that was all there was. The Quaffle began to fall and he dove to catch up... He was almost there, he _was _there...

It slipped through his fingers and bounced onto the grass. Dean gripped his broom tightly as he was thrown forward by his clumsy stop, pausing to take several deep breaths. He had turned to shout back something like _I think I did alright _when he was nearly knocked from his broom by a wild midair hug.

Seamus clapped him awkwardly on the back when he remembered to be appropriate. They watched each other for a moment, unsure, before breaking once again into foolish grins.

"What now?" asked Dean.

"We teach you to catch," said Seamus. "You're awful."


	4. Battered

4. Battered

It had become a ritual. The offender would serve their sentence, and the rest would wait up until they returned to the tower. They would all huddle together on boys' vacant beds and try to heal the hurt as best they could. It was more a gesture of kindness than anything; there wasn't much to be done about the Cruciatus curse.

As time went on they got better: at bracing themselves, at getting through it. There was less hurt to heal, and more anger to be let out. More defiant plans to be talked over, more furious resolve to be shared and steeled. But still they kept to the boys' dormitory. Even in Gryffindor Tower, it was impossible to know who would hear, or who would tell.

Seamus scanned the common room as he gripped the edge of the portrait hole to keep himself upright, but he knew where they were. He ignored the stares as he crossed the room, chin up.

"What happened to your face?" gasped Lavender when he had struggled up the last step.

"Can you see the bruises already?" He remained standing in the doorway, wanting to fall into bed but sure it would hurt. "I don't care about those. It's my chest that... How do you tell if you've broken a rib?"

Parvati's eyebrows had come together in concern. "You have to go to the Hospital Wing."

"D'you think Pomfrey'd even be allowed?" wondered Neville.

Ginny, lying against the pillow of what had been her brother's bed, snorted. "Doubt it."

"Yeah." The unbruised side of Seamus's face twisted into a bitter smile. "I've got to suffer for my Muggle-loving mouth, haven't I?"

"You haven't told us what happened," said Parvati, softly.

He was ushered over to a bed by Neville and gingerly sat. "It started out like every time, you know, but I guess I was being more of a pain in the arse than usual. And Amycus went mad, really mad, screaming all over the place and-" He paused to slowly draw in a painful breath. "I think they know they've got to do better, if they want to keep us in line. But he's not that creative, that one, and I figure he didn't know what to do, so he just-" Here, he mimed a wild slash of a wand. "Threw me around a bit. Into the walls, and desks and things."

There were faint murmurs of sympathy, but above them, hesitantly, there was Lavender. "I told you to keep your mouth shut."

"What?" demanded Seamus acidly.

"I'm sorry, Seamus, I just mean, if you'd stop provoking them so much..."

"What do you want me to do, Lav?" he snapped. "Do you want me to do what they say? Write all my essays about how Muggles are subhuman filth, and put up with them making examples of twelve-year-olds?" He gave a sharp, angry laugh. "Hell, I can swear allegiance to bloody You-Know-Who if you say so-"

"That's not what I meant, and you know it," she interrupted, the coldness in her tone a perfect counter to his. "There's standing up for what's right, and then there's being stupid. The way you talk to them sometimes, for no reason... It's reckless. It's like you _want _this to happen to you."

Parvati was pleading them then to calm down, but Seamus had no intentions of leaving the conversation unfinished. "What, I'm asking for it?"

"You _are_," Lavender said. "It's not funny, it's going to get you _killed_."

At any other time that could have been hyperbole, and he was almost inclined to laugh, but there was silence in the group as the very real possibility sank in. That perhaps it was only a matter of time.

"I could," said Seamus in a low voice, into the quiet. "Do what they say, I mean. Join up with the Death Eaters and everything. And they'd have me, because I've got wizard blood and I can prove it." His words caught in his throat, and it was some time before he could speak again. "It's not fair," he finally said. "That I've got that choice, when there are people out there being rounded up for the way they were born. I don't deserve it."

The rest of them shared a meaningful look around him but it was Ginny who said it, in a manner so tender it made him feel pitied. "Do you think... Is this about Dean?"

"It's not about fucking _Dean_," he spat, almost regretting his tone but not quite caring enough.

Her expression shifted quickly to contempt. "There's no need to be so-"

Neville cut them off with a sudden sternness. "Fighting with each other won't help anyone." He looked pointedly at Seamus, who had been cowed into silence but was obviously still seething.

Parvati pulled them back to the original conversation. "There's got to be something in the library on healing spells. We'll look in the morning." She placed a tentative hand on Seamus's shoulder. He didn't acknowledge her. As the girls solemnly left for their dormitories, he lay down and closed his eyes, not even bothering to change.

On the neighboring bed, Neville sat cross-legged, watching him with worry. "If you… Y'know, if you ever want to talk…"

A few years ago he'd never have imagined sharing his insecurities with anyone, never mind Neville Longbottom, but everything was in the open now. Their solidarity didn't have room for things like secrecy or pride. He considered it: talking things over with him would probably help. It had helped before.

But right now he didn't want to. He had no desire to discuss the complexities of feelings he didn't want to feel. He just wanted to forget it all.

He clenched his teeth against the ache that pounded through his entire body, trying to put it out of his mind so he could get some sleep as quickly as possible. "Not now, Nev."


End file.
